In Memory of Moshe Shaul, an Izmir-born Ladino researcher, a broadcaster for Kol Yisrael (where he was a colleague of Yitzhak Levy), editor of Aki Yerushalayim, VP of the National Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino, and recipient of multiple awards and honors, including the title “Comandante de la Orden del Merito Civil Español”
Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one
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🍪“The Shape of Pastries Past”
By Alexander Aciman, Tablet Magazine
Boyos
(Photo courtesy of Alexander Aciman/Tablet Magazine)
From a distance, bollos are “a savory, cheese-stuffed pastry from pre-Inquisition Spain” and “a centuries-old Jewish culinary tradition.” Alexander Aciman, however, sifts between the various pastries “known as boyos, boyoz, and bolos” and finds the tension in the kitchen that accompanied his deaf, jitterbug-dance-champion grandmother’s failures to shape a bollo in the form of a star of David, the way her mother-in-law “who did not think a deaf woman was good enough for her hearing son” knew how to do. Aciman also couldn’t make the star-shaped pastry, “I do not know what exactly my great-grandmother’s trick was.”
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Feature: NY-Jerusalem Sephardi Jazz Connection🎶🎷
Jewish American Contributions to the Jazz Tradition – Arnie Lawrence, Jazz Educator: Follow the Masters and Take Greatness as Your Guide
Israeli-born and Brooklyn-based jazz artists Omer Avital and Itamar Borochov have pioneered the integration of Sephardi sounds into some of the most exciting music made in the first decades of the 21st century, from the World Music sensation Yemen Blues to the New Jerusalem Orchestra’s Andalusian-Moroccan masterpiece, “Eternal Love.” However, this flowering of world-class culture didn’t simply appear out of nowhere. Arnie Lawrence, the Brooklyn-born jazz educator who apprenticed as a teacher under jazz legend Clark Terry and who later founded the Center for Creative Music in Jerusalem, taught them both, and he is the link that directly connects Israeli jazz to a guy who played with “The Greats” and shared a double bill with John Coltrane. In this week’s video feature, taken from the recent webinar, “Jewish American Contributions to the Jazz Tradition,” Aryeh Tepper, the Co-Director of the Omni-American Future Project (with the Combat Antisemitism Movement and Jazz Leadership Project) and Director of Publications at the ASF, explores Arnie’s injunction to his students to follow the greats and take greatness as their guide.
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✡️“A Sephardi renaissance is underway”
By Leon Saltiel, The Jerusalem Post
Bayt Dakira, Mr. André Azoulay’s Center in the vanguard city of the Moroccan renaissance, Essaouira, Morocco, 21 May 2023
(Photo courtesy of Dr. Leon Saltiel)
Dr. Leon Saltiel, Director of Diplomacy/Representative at UN Geneva and UNESCO/Coordinator on Countering Antisemitism for the World Jewish Congress and author of The Holocaust in Thessaloniki, notes an increased “interest in and appreciation for Jewish culture and history” among “governments, local authorities, civil society, academics and the media” that focuses on “Sephardi Jews and the countries where they have had a prominent presence, including Spain, Morocco and Greece.” That said, Saltiel is aware that translating interest and appreciation into social acceptance of Jews and Jewish culture requires changing the way history is told, and he accordingly argues that “governments should offer ongoing funding to preserve, renovate and promote their country’s Jewish heritage and make local Jewish communities more visible. Local Jewish history should become part of school curricula and textbooks so that new generations consider it as their own. Histories need to be vigorously taught to build true understanding, reconciliation and resilience – and not avoid the darker chapters.”
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The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa: The Impact of World War II
By Professor Reva Spector Simon
Incorporating published and archival material, this volume fills an important gap in the history of the Jewish experience during World War II, describing how the war affected Jews living along the southern rim of the Mediterranean and the Levant, from Morocco to Iran.
Surviving the Nazi slaughter did not mean that Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa were unaffected by the war: there was constant anti-Semitic propaganda and general economic deprivation; communities were bombed; and Jews suffered because of the anti-Semitic Vichy regulations that left them unemployed, homeless, and subject to forced labor and deportation to labor camps.
Covering the entire Middle East and North Africa region, this book on World War II is a key resource for students, scholars, and general readers interested in Jewish history, World War II, and Middle East history.
Birkenau (Auschwitz II) How 72,000 Greek Jews Perished
By Albert Menache, M.D.
Memoirs of An Eyewitness; NUMBER 124454
This is the story of the destruction of the Balkan Sephardic Jewish Community by the Nazis in WWII. Written by the President of the Jewish Community of Salonica, Greece, it is the earliest published account by a survivor. Written while still in the concentration camp on smuggled paper, it has been out of print since the first edition appeared in 1947.
This new edition has been updated with historical documents, photographs, and notes on the restoration of Jewish life in Greece after the war.
Watch Dr. Joe Halio speak about “Dr. Albert Menache & The Holocaust in Salonika”
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
Living the Parsha with Mati Seri
Join us for a discussion of actor, singer, presenter and author Mati Seri’s new book “52 Weeks of Devotion” on the weekly Torah portion. The presentation will be accompanied by musical interludes by the singer.
Sunday, 25 June at 12:00 PM EDT
(Complimentary RSVP)
Sign-up Now!
Sponsorship opportunities available:
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ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
Houses of Life:
Synagogues and Cemeteries in Italy
We invite you to a virtual tour of an exhibit currently on display at MEIS - the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah.
Curated by Andrea Morpurgo and Amedeo Spagnoletto, this exhibit offers an innovative in-depth approach focusing on the architecture, rituals, and the roles played by both synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in the Jewish community. Visitors will explore the specifically Italian nature of these two places, while understanding the over two thousand years of history of the country’s Jewish community.
The history of cities and of human beings intertwine in the exhibit, through their original architecture, artifacts that are passed down in and between families, and are on display. Among these are prestigious loans such as the Aron ha-Qodesh, the holy Ark, of the Vercelli Jewish Community and many precious documents from both State Archives and Italian Jewish Communities.
Monday, 26 June at 12:00 PM EDT
(Complimentary RSVP)
Sign-up Now!
About the curators:
Andrea Morpurgo is an architect and architectural historian. He graduated from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, then moved to the Netherlands where he earned a Master of Excellence in Architecture at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and later a PhD in History of Architecture and Urban Planning at the Polytechnic of Turin. He is author of the book “The Jewish Cemetery in Italy: History and architecture of an identity space” (Quodlibet), professor of the “Synagogal Architecture” course of the three-year University Diploma in Jewish Studies promoted by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, and member of the board of the “Foundation for Jewish Cultural Heritage in Italy”.
Amedeo Spagnoletto is the Director of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah. He is also a sofer, a Jewish ritual scribe. From 2017 until 2019 he was Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Florence. From 2011 until 2019 he was teacher of Jewish Law Principles, Exegesis and Bible, in the Jewish Studies Degree of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
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ASF Broome & Allen & ADL Collaborative for Change Fellow Isaac de Castro presents:
Entre Diasporas: Telling the Latin-American Jewish story. Contando la historia judía latinoamericana
Tell your story. Cuenta tu historia.
We’re looking for first-generation Latino Jews in the United States who immigrated because of political and social turmoil. Jews of Sephardic descent from Colombia, Cuba, and Venezuela that now reside in the Miami area will be given priority, but others are welcome to apply as well.
Fill out this form to be considered as an interviewee for this project. After you’ve submitted, we will be in touch promptly to set up a preliminary phone call.
Click here for more information.